NEUOFFENBARUNG[MEr.01_008,001] Now that we have looked over and into the Australian mainland, let us pay a brief visit to the more important islands and see what happens there too.
[MEr.01_008,002] I said only the more important island states. There are countless smaller islands in the ocean, but all are ruled either from the mainlands or from the larger island states.
[MEr.01_008,003] Truly, you would hardly find much more than a thousand small islands in the ocean that have not been gnawed at and sniffed over by the chief European despotism you know.
[MEr.01_008,004] This foremost nation of world-scourers has left only those little islands more or less untouched where, after the most thorough investigation, it has found nothing for its rat's teeth to gnaw.
[MEr.01_008,005] Look at the screen. I shall spread the whole Earth before your eyes from pole to pole, and no spot shall be passed over in silence.
[MEr.01_008,006] Look at the great expanse between Asia, Australia and America. See the multitude of little islands peeping above the great surface of the water like stars in the firmament. To give you some idea of the commercial greed of this globe-scouring nation, I shall write beside each island the name the greedy discoverers gave it.
[MEr.01_008,007] Now read. Look at the most inhospitable, remotest corners of the Earth. Read the names and you will see at once to which nation every climate is accessible. These people do not care whether their sails catch fire with heat under the equator or whether they freeze in among icebergs for three quarters of the year and their ships often lie buried under fathoms of snow.
[MEr.01_008,008] In short, you will find few names other than those of these money-changers of the world. Let us go to the more important island states and see what this nation does there.
[MEr.01_008,009] Look north beyond the eastern part and see a large island called New Guinea. It too is reckoned part of Australia. It has few mountains and is younger in origin than Australia, which is scarcely more than three thousand years old. The island of Guinea is nearly seven hundred years younger.
[MEr.01_008,010] Some Asian peoples discovered it much earlier than Australia. The English and Dutch therefore found it far more cultivated than they later found the Australian mainland. What could be more natural than for this worldly nation to take full possession of such a find without further ado, to the thunder of its cannon?
[MEr.01_008,011] No transported convicts are put ashore here, to be sure. But the poor inhabitants of the island are hardly a hair better off than the enslaved people in North America.
[MEr.01_008,012] These people receive some training, though they are not educated for their own sakes in what is called the Christian religion or in other branches of knowledge. They are trained for the same reason that you break in wild horses: to become better fitted to carry English burdens, to work and fight for the English. When their masters feast, they too receive a reward, often worse than that given to draught animals among you when their work is done.
[MEr.01_008,013] These foremost brokers of the world have no wish to eat their bread in the sweat of their brow. They station themselves at every end of the Earth with idle hands, open their mouths wide and have the peoples they have unjustly subjugated drive roast birds into their mouths, as you say.
[MEr.01_008,014] Look at the middle of the screen. The island lies open before you. See how the workers, nearly naked under the glowing rays of the Sun, must do the hardest work.
[MEr.01_008,015] Many climb about in the trees and have to gather a kind of wool much finer and more beautiful than a similar kind in the East Indies. Others are occupied almost day and night growing sugar cane. Still others must grub in the depths of the earth for gold and all kinds of precious stones.
[MEr.01_008,016] Others have to carry their idle masters about in sedan chairs like beasts of burden. Still others build fortifications and great storehouses, and are often miserably maltreated for the poorest wages.
[MEr.01_008,017] There are many more wretched situations to see. If you take a proper look at these few, it may suffice to add that this worldly nation deals with almost all the conquered island states with the same policy the Romans once applied to the worship of foreign gods.
[MEr.01_008,018] When they discover a heathen people of kindly disposition on an island, little is said of Christianity. They have themselves instructed in that heathen form of religion. Once they see that such a poor religion suits their great worldly purse better than Christianity does, they say, like My dear Paul, ‘We will be all things to all people, to gain something from them all.’ Paul wished to be all things to all people to win them for Me. These people want to gain everything from everyone.
[MEr.01_008,019] Only when a heathen religion has very self-serving principles is the Christian religion preached with the heaviest cannon. Once the people have adopted it, it goes without saying what all-embracing reward is due to those who proclaimed salvation.
[MEr.01_008,020] Look again at the screen. See another island, called New Britain, and a little farther up another, called New Ireland. I think you will not have to ask many questions to find out who the masters of these two important islands are.
[MEr.01_008,021] Farther down there is another important island surrounded by several smaller ones: New Caledonia. There is no need to ask who rules these considerable territories or what goes on there. Look only in part to North America, Australia and New Guinea.
[MEr.01_008,022] Look southwards in the eastern part of Australia. There is a sizeable but very barren island that is hard to reach, called Van Diemen's Land. It looks rather poor there, which is why the Dutch are even permitted to let the island bear a Dutch name, if nothing else.
[MEr.01_008,023] Despite that Dutch name, the English have selected the very best landing place for themselves. Only the western part is open to the Dutch duty-free.
[MEr.01_008,024] As for the sizeable fishery in the east, the English know very well how to dip their nets into the sea there.
[MEr.01_008,025] Let us leave this island and turn a good way south. See two very important islands next to one another, separated only by what is called the Koks Strait.
[MEr.01_008,026] This is New Zealand. A little farther south is an island of some size called Cornwallis. The English have left these islands their sovereignty in exchange for a substantial tribute of grain. Their rulers have been left in office for various reasons.
[MEr.01_008,027] The main reason is that governing these exceedingly remote lands costs the English nothing this way, and their extremely hospitable disposition, as already mentioned, suits them very well. For the same reason Christianity makes very poor progress here.
[MEr.01_008,028] The second reason why this worldly nation has undertaken no more thunderous expedition against these lands is the great expense involved.
[MEr.01_008,029] The third reason is that large ships cannot easily approach this land because of frequent storms and many reefs and sandbanks.
[MEr.01_008,030] There are various other selfish reasons why these remote but fertile maritime lands have not yet fallen wholly into the despotic claws of this world-famous nation.
[MEr.01_008,031] Look, some English ships, something between merchantmen and warships, are now sailing straight for these lands. The grain and other useful produce have already been harvested there, for, as you probably know, your spring is their autumn.
[MEr.01_008,032] The ships will arrive at just the right time. Count them. It is quite a caravan, one hundred and seventy in all, large and small. So that you may see what they do there, I shall hasten the voyage in spirit.
[MEr.01_008,033] Look, we are already there. See how these poor peoples, mostly still true Cainites, hurry to the coast laden with baskets and with sacks and crates the English left for that purpose, to pay what they suppose to be tribute to the gods. They take these worldly people for higher beings who have come down from the clouds to Earth in such fine floating houses to receive, at the end of their world, the offerings they believe are due to them.
[MEr.01_008,034] They conclude that these are higher beings because from those houses they can make lightning and thunder and hurl mighty thunderbolts as readily as from the clouds.
[MEr.01_008,035] The receivers of tribute know these weaknesses well, so they announce their arrival with cannon fire. After a stay of a few weeks, when they have packed everything into their ships, they give these poor peoples a grand display of cannon fire and rockets in payment. It tells the inhabitants that the gods have received enough offerings.
[MEr.01_008,036] To prevent any other nation from chancing upon such a windfall, the small islands around these large ones are well furnished with English forts.
[MEr.01_008,037] The great lands themselves are thus held as though perpetually captive. At the few points where they can be landed on, the English have planted their cannon to cover every approach.
[MEr.01_008,038] Where the land is inaccessible, as I said, no guards are needed. So, despite these lands' sovereignty, these people addicted to the world and the sea are to be regarded as their rulers from the coast to the innermost parts.
[MEr.01_008,039] Here, to be sure, they practise no cruelty in the sense of wielding a slave whip and a torch of hell over these poor people. Yet I say that here of all places they stamp themselves as the greatest monsters on Earth.
[MEr.01_008,040] For as long as someone tyrannises over others out of greed and avarice, they may be compared to a devil, a mere servant of Satan. However terrible the tyranny, at least the abused person is humbled to the innermost drop of marrow. Some idea of Christianity is imparted, though tyrannically, and by looking upon My cross these poor people are able to bear their misery.
[MEr.01_008,041] But where shameful greed shuts a people out entirely from all higher light, and then trumpets falsely to the whole world what blessed progress that people is making, while secretly leaving it in shameful darkness, listen: no devil can perform such feats. A master of the craft must set his hand to that work.
[MEr.01_008,042] See, this ranks among the greatest abominations on Earth. Truly, were a tyrant to kill a thousand innocent people over a whole year with the most dreadful instruments of torture, in ways no human tongue could tell, I would sooner show him mercy than such monsters from the a… of the prince of hell.
[MEr.01_008,043] You may not grasp this unspeakable cruelty as readily as if you saw, on another island, people hung by their feet from a branch, their heads reaching down towards the ground. There a kind of small green ant devours them. They often breathe their last in unspeakable pain on the sixth or seventh day, and are left hanging until the ants have consumed the last drop of marrow from their bones.
[MEr.01_008,044] Indeed, your hair would turn snow-white and stand on end if you saw people held against great grindstones and ground away to the last fibre. You would inevitably close your eyes if, on another island, you came upon people with arms and feet bound, hung from branches by their genitals, and women suspended from the men's feet by a rope passed through their labia.
[MEr.01_008,045] I could give you countless examples of such cruelties, but you would see in them all sorts of crucifixions by which people are deprived of earthly life.
[MEr.01_008,046] Yet all these cruelties are scarcely a drop of dew beside the ocean of such spiritual maltreatment of poor humanity. One limb after another may be severed from the body, but it can endure such torment only to a point.
[MEr.01_008,047] Once it becomes too much for the soul, the soul and the spirit at once disengage from their covering. The tyrant may then pinch, flog, burn or grind the body, or do whatever cruelty he pleases to it. It is much as if one of you did such things to a coat you had taken off, for the body can feel pain only as long as the soul remains in it.
[MEr.01_008,048] Once the soul has taken its leave because it has had enough, all pain has ceased, as I said.
[MEr.01_008,049] But such maltreatment of soul and spirit, the fastening of slave chains on the immortal spirit for profit, is more, infinitely more, I say, than all the bodily cruelties committed on the whole Earth. Do you think it is easy to turn such enslaved spirits once they are free?
[MEr.01_008,050] See, the human spirit is free. But once it has taken a direction, who can change it without destroying the spirit?
[MEr.01_008,051] Consider what the Father's heart must feel when, like a careful husbandman, He must stand by and watch hail destroy His crops.
[MEr.01_008,052] Therefore I say: woe to you tyrants! You will share the lot of your brothers the devils. But infinitely greater woe to you who have the power to bring a true light to all the peoples of the Earth and fail to do so, but out of base greed and worldly craving cast them into greater labyrinths of darkness than those in which they lay in their innocence.
[MEr.01_008,053] Yes, I say once again, infinitely great woe to you when your day of reckoning comes. Truly, you will receive what My Godhead in the innermost depth of its fire of wrath can invent and devise. I need say no more.
[MEr.01_008,054] To rob a person of their God is the greatest of abominations. I need tell you no more.
[MEr.01_008,055] To use My word for the basest purposes of greed and avarice is likewise, as all the foregoing, the greatest of abominations. I need say absolutely no more.
[MEr.01_008,056] As for the other island states, apart from Japan, which the ninth hour will deal with, it is nearly the same as with the earlier islands, with the exception of an island in the middle of the ocean called Otaheity.
[MEr.01_008,057] Things go almost as they do in New Zealand, except that European arms drills have been introduced in a few places, and Christianity here and there too. For small as it is compared with the others, this island now supplies nearly all the English island states with sulphur and the best saltpetre. That is why substantial powder works have been established there. Its soil is almost pure sulphur, and one of the largest fire-spewing mountains is found there. Its crater takes several hours to walk round and is always full of glowing lava.
[MEr.01_008,058] Let that suffice for today's eighth hour. With the short introduction I have given you in this hour, bodily and spiritually, the ninth hour will give you clearer insight. Amen.